


Habits

by daisybrien



Category: The Devil's Engine - Alexander Gordon Smith
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 21:59:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10817586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: Some things stick, and Marlow doesn't mind that very much.





	Habits

**Author's Note:**

> Gordon...... Ur killing me dude.

Marlow’s awake to hear her screams coming from down the hall, gasping, choking shrill things reverberating off the old concrete floors and through the thin drywall separating each room. It’s an all too familiar sound now, but it still sets his teeth grinding against each other, his throat closing up with barely pent anxiety. He knows this late, in the calm of this ramshackle bungalow in a foreign slum they were desperate to use as sanctuary, there is no real danger. He reminds himself that the disturbance is nothing more than a common nightmare, reminds himself there’s no need to get up, to panic and grab the nearest thing he can use as a weapon, but he doesn’t think that his body would move even if his logic had failed and he had wanted - or needed - it to.

He lies prone, ears straining to pick up detail muffled by the walls; the rising pitch, the grating strain it has on her throat with growing force, the way it stutters off into panicked coughs, staccato beats that trail off into a pressing silence. He thinks to check the watch on his bedside table, too ambivalent to actually do so, idly wondering how late into the night she must be waking from whatever terror had taken her mind for the third time tonight.

There’s something else, something new breaking the morbid nightly routine. There’s the shuffle of fabric on fabric, followed by the violent shriek of rusty bedsprings. Marlow’s heart leaps into his throat at the sound of a squeaking door hinge, feet gently, tentatively padding their way across the floor, growing louder as they come closer to his bedroom door. 

It’s not long before his own door creaks open, slow and long. Pan’s figure is a mere shadow in the narrow opening she makes for herself in the doorway, the silhouette of her dishevelled bedhead pointing in all directions. Her breathing is shallow, shaking, and Marlow can hear the tapping of her nail against the door as she steadies herself.

“Pan?” His voice breaks through the quiet against his will. His regret trails along behind it like a dog’s tail between its legs; she’s hesitating, he knows, stubborn to the core but frazzled and jumpy all the same. He should have given her time, or at least an out.

“Jesus, Marlow” Pan gasps, body jumping suddenly enough to make the door creak again. She tries to clear her throat, her voice hoarse from the prior, constant strain. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” he murmurs, the act of talking even in such hushed tones enough to remind him of the exhaustion in his body, burning behind his eyes.

Pan gives a forgiving grunt in response, quiet enough that it’s lost beneath the shuffling of her feet as she inches closer. Marlow’s response is almost automatic, one arm lazily swinging a corner of the bedsheets away to let Pan crawl in next to him. The rotting mattress groans in protest, leaning to the side under the new weight as she lies awkwardly beside him. 

He keeps his arm out, lets her shimmy closer of her own will; her head finds a comfortable resting place in the nook of his underarm, and he almost laughs when he hears her sniffing discontentedly. Still, she leans into him, her arm warm and heavy as she all but flings it across his chest, and he keeps his comment about her not smelling like daisies herself behind closed lips.

“I should be apologizing,” Pan laughs, a cynical, bitter tune. He tentatively wraps his outstretched arm around her, keeps it there once he sees she’s still relaxed, relieved she’s comfortable with the touch.

He tucks her in once she’s stopped adjusting, lifts the covers up to her chin like he did what feels like years ago back in Italy, when the bed was clean and they both smelled like hotel soap and fear and hope was a churning, acidy ache in all their stomachs.

“’S fine,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

She grunts in response again, almost as if to say she knew. Marlow swallows a lump in his throat, looks up at what would be the ceiling if the dark weren’t so heavy above the two of them. He’s almost glad for it, wonders if it obscures enough at such close view even as he feels her eyes trace the contours of his face; can she see the bags under his eyes like bruises, feel the mould of his body in the mattress beneath him, having laid there unmoving for hours, not just through the night? Does she know how long he hasn’t been able to sleep, body tired and unwilling to do anything, even to shut down and rest?

“Still,” she murmurs, sighing. Silence, for a beat, and then, “I’ll try not to make this a habit.” 

“I don’t mind,” Marlow replies, feels the twitch of her smile against his chest. He tests the water by moving his hand to her head, dips his toe in as he runs his fingers through the fuzz of her hair. He releases a breath once she does, feeling her sink into him. “I mean, uh, if you don’t?”

Not all of the tension leaves her toned muscles as she lies next to him; he doesn’t expect it to. But for a body always on alert, he’s happy to be the one causing the happy groan that bubbles up in her throat, and the evenness of her now steady breathing.

“I don’t think I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> LONG TIME NO SEE university kicked my ass but I got some time before summer school, so here I am writing stuff for tiny fandoms. Read The Devil's Engine y'all.


End file.
